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Thirty-two faculty members transfer to emeritus status

Posted June 12, 2013; 10:12 p.m.

by the Office of Communications

Thirty-two Princeton University faculty members were transferred to emeritus status in recent action by the Board of Trustees. All are effective July 1, 2013, except where noted. The faculty members are listed below, and their bios may be viewed by clicking on their names or scrolling down the page.

Leonard Babby, a professor of Slavic languages and literatures, has published widely in the field of generative linguistics and is a renowned scholar of Slavic languages and morphosyntactic theory. He was one of the first linguists to apply generative grammar to Slavic languages, seeking out the general laws and rules that governed their structure. In his 60 scholarly articles and five monographs, he has tackled such subjects as a two-tiered theory of argument structure, impersonal sentences and negative existential sentences.

After spending 20 years at Cornell University, Babby came to Princeton in 1991, where he has served as the head of the Slavic languages and literatures department's Ph.D. Program in Slavic and Theoretical Linguistics and as director of the Program in Linguistics. He had also served as an assistant professor at Princeton in 1970-71. Babby earned his B.A. in Russian language and literature from Brooklyn College, and his Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Mark Cohen (Photo by Brian Wilson)

Mark Cohen, the Khedouri A. Zilkha Professor of Jewish Civilization in the Near East and professor of Near Eastern studies, is a distinguished historian of Jews in the medieval Islamic world. His published work includes studies of Muslim-Jewish relations, Jewish social and economic history, the structure and functioning of the Jewish community, the Cairo Geniza, and Jewish law and society, as well as a translation and edition of the autobiography of a famous 17th-century Venetian rabbi. In addition to publishing scores of articles and books, Cohen established and has led the Princeton Geniza Project, an online database of transcriptions of documents used by scholars worldwide.

Cohen, who began teaching at Princeton in 1973, has also promoted understanding between Jews and Muslims in public talks and op-ed pieces. After receiving his A.B. from Brandeis University and M.A. from Columbia University, he received his M.H.L. and Ph.D. from the Jewish Theological Seminary.

Martin Collcutt (Photo courtesy of Martin Collcutt)

Martin Collcutt, a professor of East Asian studies and history, developed his interest in Japan after college, when he took a position teaching English in Japan, which led to learning Japanese, meeting his wife, and tutoring the then-crown prince in English. Since that time, he has focused his research and teaching on elements of Japanese history, religion and culture, including Zen Buddhism, the arts in medieval Japan, the aristocratic and warrior culture of the Heian and Kamakura periods, and Japan's relations with China and the West. Collcutt's principal publications include "Five Mountains: The Rinzai Zen Monastic Institution in Medieval Japan" in 1981; "Cultural Atlas of Japan" with Marius Jansen and Isao Kamakura in 1988; and the translation of "The Iwakura Embassy, 1871-1873, Volume 1," compiled by Kume Kunitake, in 2002.

Collcutt joined the Princeton faculty in 1975, served as chair of the East Asian studies department for three years and was director of the East Asian studies program for nearly 20 years, strengthening the intensive study of Chinese and Japanese. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of Cambridge and his doctoral degree from Harvard.

John Conway (Photo by Denise Applewhite)

John Conway, the John Von Neumann Professor in Applied and Computational Mathematics and professor of mathematics, has made significant contributions in the fields of group theory, number theory, algebra, geometric topology, theoretical physics, combinatorial game theory and geometry over the last 50 years. In addition to dozens of articles and books, his accomplishments include inventing a new system of numbers, the surreal numbers, and, with Princeton Professor of Mathematics Emeritus Simon Kochen, proving the Free Will Theorem, which stated that elementary particles can freely choose their spins in experiments, consistent with physical law.

Conway's numerous honors include the London Mathematical Society's Berwick Prize and Pólya Prize, Northwestern University's Nemmers Prize in Mathematics, and the American Mathematical Society's Leroy P. Steele Prize for Mathematical Exposition. Conway is a fellow of the Royal Society of London and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He received his B.A. and Ph.D. from Cambridge, and he came to Princeton in 1986.

Edward Cox (Photo courtesy of Edward Cox)

Edward Cox, the Edwin Grant Conklin Professor of Biology and professor of molecular biology, has made seminal contributions in four major areas of biology: the genetics and population consequences of error rate control during DNA replication in microbial populations, the genesis of large-scale spatial patterns in simple developmental systems, the development of new ways to study single molecules in microfabricated environments, and the analysis of single molecular events in living bacterial cells in real time.

Cox joined the Princeton faculty in 1967, and served in several administrative posts, including as associate dean of the college from 1972 to 1977 and as chair of the Department of Biology from 1977 to 1987. He received his B.Sc. from the University of British Columbia and his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, followed by training as a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University.

Frederick Dryer (Photo by Denise Applewhite)

Frederick Dryer, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, has focused his research in the field of energy conversion, with particular interest in the chemistry of combustion and the chemical kinetics of fuels and other materials. His work on ignition and combustion has contributed to fire safety-related issues, and for three decades he has collaborated with NASA on experiments related to isolated droplet burning in low-gravity environments.

Dryer received his B.A. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and his Ph.D. from Princeton. He served as a member of Princeton's professional research staff for 10 years before joining the faculty in 1981. In addition to mentoring more than 50 students, Dryer served as undergraduate departmental representative from 1984 to 1987 and as associate dean of academic affairs for the School of Engineering and Applied Science from 1987 to 1990.

Thomas Espenshade (Photo by Brian Wilson)

Thomas Espenshade's wide-ranging career as a professor of sociology and faculty associate in the Office of Population Research (OPR) has covered families and household economics, contemporary immigration flows, the development of mathematical models, and the sociology of education and affirmative action. His publications include 150 articles and 13 books and monographs including the prize-winning book "No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal: Race and Class in Elite College Admission and Campus Life."

Espenshade earned his B.A. from The College of Wooster, his master's degree at Yale University, and his Ph.D. from Princeton. He taught at Bowdoin College, Florida State University and Brown University and worked at The Urban Institute and U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service before joining Princeton in 1988. In addition to mentoring many cohorts of students and postdocs, Espenshade has served as the departmental representative and chair of the sociology department, as well as the director of graduate studies of OPR.

Jacques Fresco (Photo courtesy of the Department of Molecular Biology)

Jacques Fresco, the Damon B. Pfeiffer Professor in the Life Sciences and professor of molecular biology, is a pioneer in the biochemistry of nucleic acids, and since his faculty appointment in 1960 he has helped develop the field at Princeton. Fresco's research has spanned several areas of DNA and RNA biochemistry, including tRNA structure and folding, gene repair for sickle cell anemia, mechanisms of spontaneous mutation and developing a rationale for the evolution of the genetic code. His research has been reported in many published papers, meeting abstracts, book chapters and patents.

After Fresco earned his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees from New York University, he worked as a fellow at the Sloan-Kettering Institute, as an instructor in biochemistry and pharmacology at NYU School of Medicine, and then as a senior fellow at Harvard and the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England. First in 1965 and then from 1974 to 1980, he served as chair of Princeton's biochemical sciences department, which later evolved into the Department of Molecular Biology. Fresco has remained active in research and teaching throughout his 53 years at Princeton — he is teaching this spring and just published a paper on his current research, which he intends to continue to pursue during his retirement.

Charles Gross (Photo courtesy of Charles Gross)

Charles Gross, a professor of psychology and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute, has contributed foundational work to the field of cognitive neuroscience. He has specialized in studying the primate visual system and has revolutionized scientists' understanding of sensory processing and pattern recognition. Throughout his career, Gross has studied neurons in the inferior temporal cortex of the brain, analyzing their visual functions as they relate to perception and learning.

After receiving his B.A. from Harvard, Gross studied ethology at Cambridge on a Fulbright Scholarship before earning his Ph.D. in psychology there. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and faculty member at Harvard prior to joining Princeton's faculty in 1970. Among his many honors, Gross is a fellow of the American Psychological Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

András Hámori (Photo courtesy of András Hámori)

András Hámori, the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor of Near Eastern Studies, is one of the foremost scholars of classical Arabic literature. His scholarship combines linguistic expertise with literary criticism, as in his pioneering 1974 text, "On the Art of Medieval Arabic Literature." Hámori has written about a range of topics, from the Arabic background of some Hebrew poems from medieval Spain to the "Thousand and One Nights," and from the concepts of shame and prudence in an eighth-century mirror for princes to modern jihadist poetry.

Hámori earned his A.B. at Princeton and his Ph.D. from Harvard, and he began teaching at Princeton in 1967. He served as chair of the Department of Near Eastern Studies from 1997 to 2005.

Marie-Hélčne Huet (Photo by David Dopkin)

Marie-Hélčne Huet, the M. Taylor Pyne Professor of French and Italian, has taught and researched a number of topics throughout her career, with a focus on 18th- and 19th-century French thought and literature. Her publication topics include Jules Verne, the French Revolution, the monstrous in French Enlightenment writings and the culture of disaster. Huet's many honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship and being awarded the title of Officier dans l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques by the French government for her contributions to culture and the arts.

Huet joined the Princeton faculty in 1999, after teaching at the University of California-Berkeley, Amherst College, the University of Virginia and University of Michigan. She earned her doctorate from the University of Bordeaux.

Morton Kostin (Photo by Leigh Photo and Imaging)

Morton Kostin, a professor of chemical and biological engineering, has been interested in a wide range of fields in science and engineering throughout his career, publishing refereed articles in reaction kinetics, quantum tunneling, the Fokker-Planck equation, Kramers' theory of chemical kinetics, reaction engineering, kinetics and diffusion of multienzyme systems, membrane diffusion, dissipative effects in quantum theory, transport phenomena and chemical reaction in catalytic reactors, anomalous osmosis, the Nernst-Planck equation, Monte Carlo methods, the Boltzmann equation, hot-atom chemistry, variational methods and numerical analysis. More recently, Kostin has used this background to extend the range of phenomena covered by transition state theory. This has been successful, and in many cases he has obtained excellent to very good agreement with experiment. The advantages of this new approach are that it is more comprehensive, more accurate and more rigorous than the well-known traditional equations of transition state theory. His retirement and the excellent facilities of the University will enable him to devote full time to this exciting and enjoyable research.

Kostin received his bachelor's degree from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art and his Ph.D. from Harvard. At Princeton, he served as a research associate, postdoctoral fellow and visiting lecturer before joining the faculty in 1964.

Heath Lowry (Photo courtesy of Heath Lowry)

Heath Lowry, the Ataturk Professor of Ottoman and Modern Turkish Studies and professor of Near Eastern studies, is a renowned scholar who has researched the entire chronological scope of Ottoman and modern Turkish history. He has written dozens of articles and books covering institutional, urban, cultural, economic, architectural and diplomatic histories of the region. They include "Trabzon Şehrinin İslamlaşma ve Türkleşmesi, 1461-1583" ("The Islamization and Turkification of Trabzon, 1461-1583"), now in its fifth edition.

Prior to coming to Princeton in 1993, Lowry helped found the history department at Bosphoros University in Istanbul, was a senior research associate at Harvard's Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, and directed the Institute of Turkish Studies. He received his B.A. from Portland State University and his Ph.D. from the University of California-Los Angeles.

Richard Miles (Photo by Denise Applewhite)

Richard Miles, the Robert Porter Patterson Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, is an expert in hypersonics and advanced laser diagnostics, and his research has spanned a range of topics including the use of lasers, electron beams, microwaves, morphing materials, and magnetic devices to observe, control, accelerate, extract power, and precondition gas flows for supersonic and hypersonic fluid dynamics, diagnostics, and propulsion applications. He invented a variety of diagnostics, including nonlinear optical methods to write and follow lines and patterns for the measurement of turbulence, and he has been a leader in the field of plasma interactions in air, including the use of magnetohydrodynamic forces to control boundary layers and extract power. His recent work involves imaging the dynamics of high-speed flows and using lasers and radar for standoff detection of trace contaminants in air. He expects to continue this research as an emeritus professor and senior research scientist.

Miles earned his bachelor's and doctoral degrees from Stanford. He joined the Princeton faculty in 1972 and served as chair of the Program in Engineering Physics from 1980 to 1996. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

Chiara Nappi (Photo by Denise Applewhite)

Chiara Nappi, a professor of physics, has made important contributions to a broad range of problems in modern particle theory. She has contributed to mathematical physics, string theory, models of baryons in quantum chromodynamics, quantum black hole physics, and supersymmetric phenomenology.

Nappi has been a member of the Princeton theoretical physics community for more than 30 years. She was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study from 1980 to 1983 and 1988 to 1999, and at Princeton was a senior research physicist from 1983 to 1988 and has been a professor since 2001. From 1999 to 2001, she was a professor at the University of Southern California. In addition to serving as director of graduate studies and departmental representative for undergraduates, Nappi has promoted science in a variety of venues, including writing in English and Italian publications about science education, serving on the board of the Princeton school system, and founding a summer school that aims to motivate women and minorities to persevere in advanced studies in theoretical physics. She earned her undergraduate and doctoral degrees at the University of Naples.

Susan Naquin (Photo by Denise Applewhite)

Susan Naquin, a professor of history and East Asian studies, is an eminent historian of late imperial China. Her studies of sectarian religion using Qing dynasty archives led to her first two books, "Millenarian Rebellion in China" and "The Wang Lun Uprising of 1774." Naquin's "Peking: Temples and City Life, 1400-1900" used deep empirical research and analysis to show how the religious institutions of China's capital facilitated the city's vibrant cultural, social and economic life during the Ming and Qing periods.

Naquin received her bachelor's degree from Stanford and her Ph.D. from Yale. She taught at UPenn before joining the Princeton faculty in 1993. She served as chair of the East Asian studies department from 2001 to 2005 and 2007-08, and received the Graduate Mentoring Award in 2009. Naquin's other honors include the Award for Scholarly Distinction from the American Historical Association, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Fulbright-Hays Program, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and American Council of Learned Societies.

Edward Nelson (Photo by Denise Applewhite)

Edward Nelson, a professor of mathematics, has contributed to a number of fields of mathematics, including probability, logic, foundations, mathematical physics and analysis. In 1995, he won the Steele Prize for research of seminal importance for his contributions to constructive quantum field theory. Nelson is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.

Nelson studied at the Liceo Scientifico Giovanni Verga in Rome before earning his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. Prior to his appointment to the Princeton faculty in 1959, he spent three years as a member of the Institute for Advanced Study.

John Pinto (Photo courtesy of John Pinto)

John Pinto, the Howard Crosby Butler Memorial Professor of the History of Architecture and professor of art and archaeology, has focused on architecture, urbanism and landscape in Italy, especially Rome, throughout his career. One of his key publications is "Hadrian's Villa and Its Legacy," which he co-authored with his former Smith College colleague William MacDonald, and which won multiple prizes including the Book of the Year Award from the American Institute of Architects. Pinto's other research interests include 18th-century architecture in Rome, the prints of Giovanni Battista Piranesi and the image of Rome in art and literature.

Pinto earned his B.A. and Ph.D. at Harvard, and he joined the Princeton faculty in 1988 after teaching at Smith for a dozen years. At Princeton, he served multiple stints as director of graduate studies and as acting chair; he also was associate chair from 1992 to 1999.

Albert Raboteau (Photo by Brian Wilson)

Albert Raboteau, the Henry W. Putnam Professor of Religion, is one of the foremost scholars of African American religious history. His first book, "Slave Religion: The 'Invisible Institution' in the Antebellum South," reshaped historians' understanding of black religious history and religious life, showing how black Christians reimagined their faith to make it give meaning to their own experience of slavery rather than accept the perspective of their oppressors.

Raboteau earned a bachelor's degree from Loyola Marymount University, a master’s in English from Berkeley, took graduate courses in theology from Marquette University, and his Ph.D. from Yale. He came to Princeton in 1982 after teaching at Yale and Berkeley. Raboteau has served in numerous administrative posts, including chair of the religion department and dean of the Graduate School.

François Rigolot (Photo by Carol Rigolot)

François Rigolot, the Meredith Howland Pyne Professor of French Literature, is a prolific scholar of Renaissance literature, with more than 200 articles and book chapters to his name, along with nine monographs and nine edited volumes. Many of his publications have examined the great writers of 16th-century France, and have investigated rhetoric, stylistics and poetics. Among Rigolot's many honors are a P.O. Kristeller Lifetime Achievement Award from the Renaissance Society of America, the Chevalier dans l'Ordre National du Mérite from the French government, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship.

Rigolot studied at the École des Hautes Etudes Commerciales before earning his M.A. in economics from Northwestern and his Ph.D. in French from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He taught at Wisconsin, Michigan and Middlebury College before joining the Princeton faculty in 1974.

Daniel Rodgers (Photo by Denise Applewhite)

Daniel Rodgers, the Henry Charles Lea Professor of History, is a renowned historian of American cultural and intellectual life. In his prize-winning books, he has tackled the subjects of work ethic in the era of high industrialism, key words in American politics, social politics during the Progressive Era, and the fracture of major intellectual trends and identities in modern times.

After earning his bachelor's degree in engineering from Brown, Rodgers spent a year providing social services in Oregon through AmeriCorps, then known as Volunteers in Service to America, or VISTA. He then completed his Ph.D. in American history at Yale. He taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison before coming to Princeton in 1980. At the University, Rodgers was chair of the history department from 1988 to 1995 and 1997-98, directed the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies from 2008 to 2012 and won the President's Award for Distinguished Teaching and Howard T. Behrman Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities.

Gilbert Rozman (Photo courtesy of Gilbert Rozman)

Gilbert Rozman, the Musgrave Professor of Sociology, has spanned the fields of sociology, regional studies and international relations in his studies of China, Japan, Korea and Russia. His research covers the topics of pre-modern urbanization and modernization in Russia and East Asia, these societies' perceptions of each other, regionalism in Asia and national identity studies. Rozman's work has won him numerous grants and honors.

Rozman spent his junior year of college at Princeton studying Russian and Chinese in the University's Critical Languages Program. He earned his bachelor's degree at Carleton College and his Ph.D. from Princeton. Rozman has long been a proponent of internationalization efforts at the University, serving on the Council on Regional Studies and chairing the Faculty Committee on International Experience in Undergraduate Education.

Peter Schäfer (Photo by John Jameson)

Peter Schäfer, the Ronald O. Perelman Professor of Jewish Studies and professor of religion, is a leading scholar of rabbinic Judaism and early Jewish mysticism. His scholarship shaped the way hekhalot manuscripts were compared and edited, and it offered an alternate narrative to their interpretation. Schäfer's work with rabbinic thought has covered comparative work on editions of the Talmud and the relationship between rabbinic thought and Christianity. He also has worked to make important manuscripts available online.

Schäfer studied at the University of Bonn and Hebrew University before earning his Ph.D. at the University of Freiburg and his habilitation at the University of Frankfurt. He taught at the University of Tübingen, University of Cologne and Free University of Berlin before joining the Princeton faculty in 1998. Schäfer has been the director of the Program in Judaic Studies since 2005.

José Scheinkman (Photo by Denise Applewhite)

José Scheinkman, the Theodore A. Wells '29 Professor of Economics, will transfer to emeritus status on Sept. 1, 2013. Over his career, he has contributed to a number of areas of economics, including mathematical methods, theories of competition and industrial organization, macroeconomics, social interactions, asset-price bubbles, financial time series, and friction in financial markets.

Scheinkman received his B.A. from the Undersidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, his M.A. from the Instituto Nacional de Matemática Pura e Aplicada, and his Ph.D. from the University of Rochester. After teaching at the University of Chicago, he came to Princeton in 1999, where he joined the economics department and helped build up Princeton's newly established Bendheim Center for Finance. In addition, Scheinkman has worked as a practitioner in finance in the United States and in public affairs in Brazil.

Anne-Marie Slaughter (Photo by Denise Applewhite)

Anne-Marie Slaughter, the Bert G. Kerstetter '66 University Professor of Politics and International Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, will transfer to emeritus status on Sept. 1, 2013. While serving as dean of the Wilson School from 2002 to 2011, she grew the faculty, especially in international relations; expanded the Master in Public Policy program and established the joint Ph.D. program; and created numerous centers and the Scholars in the Nation's Service Initiative. A scholar of international relations and international law, Slaughter also served for two years as the director for policy planning for the U.S. State Department.

After receiving her A.B. from Princeton in 1980, Slaughter earned her M.Phil. and D.Phil. in international relations from the University of Oxford and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. She taught at the University of Chicago Law School and Harvard before joining the Princeton faculty in 2002. Slaughter will become the president of the New America Foundation in the fall.

Robert Socolow (Photo by Frank Wojciechowski)

Robert Socolow, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, is known for his interdisciplinary work on energy and the environment. His 1971 book "Patient Earth," with his Yale colleague John Harte, was one of the first books to combine the science and social issues involved in climate, energy, water and land use issues. Socolow is also well-known for his 2004 article in Science, with Princeton's Frederick D. Petrie Professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Stephen Pacala, on climate change mitigation via stabilization wedges.

Zoltán Soos, a professor of chemistry, has conducted research at the intersection of chemistry and physics for nearly half a century. His research has focused on organic molecular solids, ion radical and charge transfer salts, neutral-ionic phase transitions, electronic excitations of conjugated polymers, triplet spin excitons and one-dimentional spin systems. Some of these areas have seen numerous applications with the rise of electronic devices over the last three decades. Soos has had a large network of collaborators, from his graduate students to Princeton colleagues, and from Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M., to the University of Parma in Italy and the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India.

Prior to coming to Princeton in 1966, Soos was a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow at Stanford. He earned his bachelor's degree in chemistry and physics at Harvard, and he earned his Ph.D. at the California Institute of Technology.

Erik Vanmarcke (Photo courtesy of Erik Vanmarcke)

Erik Vanmarcke, a professor of civil and environmental engineering, has explored a wide range of research interests in engineering throughout his career, including random fields and random media; risk assessment and management against earthquakes, wind and other hazards; energy density fluctuations in the early universe; and the formation of the cosmic structure. One of his most important contributions was his 1983 book "Random Fields: Analysis and Synthesis," an introduction to random field theory across disciplines; the second expanded edition of the text was published in 2010 by World Scientific.

Vanmarcke received his bachelor's degree from the University of Leuven in Belgium, his master's degree from the University of Delaware, and his Ph.D. from MIT. He taught at MIT until he joined the Princeton faculty in 1985. His honors include the American Society of Civil Engineers' 2012 Alfred M. Freudenthal Medal for distinguished achievement in safety and reliability studies and being named a distinguished member of the society, and election to the Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences of Belgium.

Maurizio Viroli (Photo courtesy of Maurizio Viroli)

Maurizio Viroli, a professor of politics, is a scholar of political theory and the history of political thought. His books have focused on Jean Jacques Rousseau, Niccolň Macchiavelli, the language of politics, nationalism, and religion and politics, and he has also studied classical republicanism, constitutionalism, classical rhetoric, citizenship and civic education.

Viroli joined the Princeton faculty in 1987. He studied at the University of Bologna and received his Ph.D. from the European University Institute in Florence. In addition to his visiting positions at other universities, he has served as an adviser to the president of the Italian Republic and is director of a Master in Civic Education program in Asti, Italy. Viroli currently has a faculty position at the University of Italian Switzerland, and he will take on a position at the University of Texas-Austin in spring 2014.

Frank von Hippel (Photo courtesy of Frank von Hippel)

Frank von Hippel, a professor of public and international affairs in the Wilson School, is a nuclear physicist and an expert on nuclear arms control and proliferation policy. Early in his career, he researched elementary particle physics theory. He then developed an interest in public policy and has worked on proposals related to the elimination of the production and use of plutonium and highly enriched uranium. Von Hippel lent technical support to Mikhail Gorbachev's initiatives to achieve a Comprehensive Test Ban and arms reductions treaties, worked in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and co-founded the International Panel of Fissile Materials.

Von Hippel earned his bachelor's degree at MIT and his Ph.D. at Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. After holding positions at the University of Chicago, Cornell, Argonne National Laboratory and Stanford, he came to Princeton in 1974. In 1975, von Hippel co-founded what is now Princeton's Program on Science and Global Security.

Andrew Wiles (Photo by Denise Applewhite)

Andrew Wiles, the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Mathematics, transferred to emeritus status Sept. 1, 2012. He received widespread acclaim for his proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, which had been unsolved for more than three centuries, in a 1995 paper titled "Modular Elliptic Curves and Fermat's Last Theorem" in the Annals of Mathematics. In doing so, Wiles brought fundamental new techniques into number theory, and he has made many other contributions to number theory through his research and his advising of graduate students at Princeton. Wiles also chaired the mathematics department from 2005 to 2009.

Wiles received his undergraduate degree at Oxford and his Ph.D. at Cambridge. He joined the Princeton faculty in 1982, and after his transfer to emeritus status he became the Royal Society Research Professor at Oxford. Wiles' many awards include the Shaw Prize and being knighted as Sir Andrew Wiles by the Queen of England.

Michael Wood (Photo by John Jameson)

Michael Wood, the Charles Barnwell Straut Class of 1923 Professor of English and Comparative Literature, is a prominent literary and cultural critic with a column in the London Review of Books and a long list of publications to his name. His interests include film studies, postcolonialism and literary criticism, and he is an expert on the modern novel in English, French, German and Spanish.

After earning his bachelor's and doctoral degrees at Cambridge, Wood took his first teaching position there. He traveled as a freelance writer and taught at Columbia and the University of Exeter before coming to Princeton in 1995. He chaired the Gauss Seminars in Criticism from 1995 to 2001 and the English department from 1998 to 2004.